Jeanne Cardinal

Lustrous, transparent, matte: Jeanne Cardinal’s studio is filled with a profusion of materials and techniques. I see multicoloured sand castles, spinning tops, dreamlike patterns. In this space, the artist develops narrative abstractions and assemblage sculptures imbued with a certain sense of humour. Straight away, I perceive infinite curiosity and generosity in the forms and materials used. The artist’s grammar appears between the lines, dotted with references to Italo Calvino’s literature or to the Book of Miracles. Jeanne Cardinal sometimes also produces site-specific works. For instance, she has drawn from the mystical history of the Saint-Mexme Collegiate Church in Chinon. The torch-shaped sculptures she created on this occasion were peppered with a myriad of clues — here the sign of the orator, there a six-winged flying fish. During one of her residencies, she fashioned large cylinders from cake tins found at a neighbouring house. She used blended egg cartons as a material rather than let them become the refuse and fossils of our time. The concrete-like appearance of the pieces created visual confusion with regard to the sculptures’ weight. In Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, she showed me an ongoing project, her “routine”, which consists in collages that enable her to play around with an image and reflect on the contrasting of materials. These collages act as a formal reservoir, with some of them going on to become three-dimensional works. Moving between various scales, Jeanne Cardinal proposes small paper theatres that may also become monumental installations. This trompe-l’oeil becomes an architectural space with an uncertain status, like stage scenery. Folding techniques allow for an in-between, for the sheet of paper to be raised and become volume. With Mariage d’inclination [Love Match], the artist placed objects on Plexiglas, therefore multiplying our perception of them. Other silhouettes emerge, and duality becomes multiplied. Elsewhere, pastel drawings mixed with watercolours knead together words and concepts, in which “terrils” [slag heaps] become “terres-îles” [soil islands]…

Excerpt from a text by Delphine Masson, 2024
Translated by Lucy Pons, 2024